Chemistry class would be the death of him.

The remainder of the bus ride had passed as morning bus rides typically did. The yellow steel vehicle chugged along country roads until it made it’s way into town, brakes screeching in protest every time it was made to stop. Soon discussions of upcoming sporting events and spring formal were halted as gossip spread about a particular friday night party and how it had been broken up by the Sheriff.

Jake leant one ear to eavesdrop for a moment, but quickly lost interest in all the gory details of who got to which base with whom and scrunched down in his seat, spending the rest of the trip becoming fully immersed in the book he was reading. Meanwhile behind him, the two girls had spent the rest of the ride gossiping and whispering to each other, and trying to catch glimpses of their current crushes.

As the bus halted for a final time, doors creaking open to spew out students like a clown car, he tucked his book away and made his way into the front doors of Timberland High School, home of the Timberwolves! immediately getting sucked into the sea of students rushing to lockers and on to classes, making him feel very much like a tiny fish in a fast moving current.

He did his best to dodge sharp elbows, and duck under footballs being tossed around, and grasped the lock of his locker, holding onto it almost as one would a life preserver in the middle of the ocean, before turning the dial on the front until it made an audible click and popped open.

It was then that he saw her.

Brenna Nolan was not only the head cheerleader, and the most popular girl in school, but also daughter to Judge David Nolan, who reigned like a king atop his bench, and was one of the most well known and respected men in the county. She was stunningly beautiful, and while she knew it, it somehow didn’t go directly to her head. On the rare occasion they’d crossed paths, she’d locked eyes with him for the briefest of moments, and smiled to him rather than looking through him like most of the other cheerleaders on the squad or girls in the school, for that matter.

There’d even been that one time in math class last semester where she’d dropped her pen and he, being quick of reflex, had swooped down and snatched it up and handed it to her, their fingers touching for the briefest of moments and she’d thanked him.

Like actually spoke to him.

He was pretty certain his heart stopped beating that day for just a few minutes.

Today though, would not be one of those days. While she did walk past him, she was engrossed in the conversation she was having and never even saw him, but he took a moment to watch her pass by and smile nevertheless.

As fast as he could blink, a fist slammed into his chest, knocking the wind from his lungs, shoving him into the row of lockers behind him.

“Eyes off my girl, freak.”

Derek Titan. Captain and quarterback of the football team, total douchebag.

While he was built like a tank, and as strong as a horse, he had the social skills of a toilet brush and was just about as pleasant to be around, unless you were a football player, or a girl.

Jake grimaced, his lungs aching as he struggled to catch his breath, one hand coming up to rub gingerly at the spot on his chest where “The Titan” had hit.

“Hey are you okay? What a jerk!”

Beth was at his side now, one hand touching his upper arm feather soft, concern written all over her face.

“M’fine.” He rasped out, feeling an even mixture of windedness and embarrassment, heads having turned up and down the hall at the clang he’d made as he made contact with the lockers, and he wanted to be out of there.

Now.

“I gotta go to class…but…thanks.” He smiled weakly at her, shutting his locker and clicking the lock into place as quickly as he could, and disappeared into the sea of people, being swallowed up so quickly Beth lost sight of him in no time.

The rest of the morning passed as usual. He handed in an english essay he’d worked on for the last couple of weeks, one he was particularly proud of, and written a test in social studies he was fairly certain he’d at least passed. When the lunch bell sounded, it was a welcome break and he slung his backpack over his shoulder and made his way to the cafeteria.

He wasn’t exactly what you’d call popular…he had a few acquaintances he’d made through some of his classes, one or two you might even call a friend. For the most part though, he kept to himself and his books and was perfectly content finding a spot at one of the almost vacant tables, eating his lunch, and reading.

This was exactly the routine he stuck to today, pulling out the bag lunch he chose to pack and eat though Mrs. Owen offered to give him lunch money every week, and cracked open his book, taking a bite from his apple.

Which is why when a plastic lunch try slapped down across from him, he startled, and nearly choked, looking up at the intruder to his silent reading time with a little bit of a scowl.

“You know..there’s this thing called being social and actually talking to people and hanging out. You should try it sometime…”

Paige Turner…Yes, that was her real name, on her birth certificate and driver’s license and everything, the nose kisser from the bus ride this morning, smirked at him. She snatched the book from his hand snapping it closed, and set it on the table in front of him.

“Hey! I was reading that!” He growled at her, though it lacked enthusiasm, mostly because he was so surprised she’d chosen to eat her lunch while sitting with him, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “Whadda you want, anyways? Don’t you have like…nails to polish or something?”.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, she was nice enough, and beyond constant teasing and pestering him, which was doubled when the two girls were around each other, she was kinda fun. Just like with Beth though, he enjoyed grouching at her, just as much as she enjoyed picking at him, and making him blush.

“My digits are top notch, grumpalumpagus. Beth did them last night.” She grinned at him, wiggling ten zebra print fingernails at him, and sat, reaching over to snatch up one of the baby carrots from his lunch and crunch into it, just as Beth set her own tray down and sat next to him.

“Besides, we wanted to talk to you about the formal.”

“Formal? That dance thing?” He asked. He was kind of clueless when it came to the big social events at the school, and didn’t much care about them anyways, though he’d heard a bit about this one.

“That dance thing” She began, curling her fingers on either side of her head in air quotes, “Is only the second biggest event of the school year besides prom, and totally the must-go-to event. It’s totally a thing. Like athing thing.” She rolled her eyes at him, looking to Beth for validation, and smiling smugly as she was met with an enthusiastic nod.

“I mighta heard something about it…why?” He asked, brushing it off as if it wasn’t a big deal to him, which truthfully it wasn’t, and looked up at her while biting into his sandwich.

“Because…are you going? And do you have a date yet?” She asked, eyeing him carefully.

He choked on his food for real this time, quickly unscrewed the cap on his bottle of water as he coughed and spluttered, tears springing to his eyes and threatening to spill out of them as he gasped for air around the lump of sandwich in his throat.

As he struggled to get the food down to make room for air, Beth thumped his back to help in clearing the sandwich obstruction, stopping once she saw him manage to figure out the whole breathing thing.

“Um..no…and no.” He said finally. “Not really my kinda thing…I guess.” He shrugged, feeling really  out of place in crowds and thinking he’d much rather spend the evening curled up with a good book, or working on a project, or hell, even doing homework than at some fancy formal dance.

“Oh. Kay. Just thought I’d check.”

Was that disappointment on her face? Was Paige…in her own beat-around-the-bush way… asking him to the dance? No…couldn’t be…could she?

He pondered this as the conversation eased into other things, only half paying attention, and nodding here and there to make it seem like he was listening. All the while though,  his mind tried to wrap itself around the possibility that Paige was trying to ask him to the dance, or get him to ask her.

Soon enough, lunch was over. Trash was tossed into cans, or in some cases left strewn all over the cafeteria, and the hallways were once more packed with students rushing to classes.

Later that afternoon, he made his way to his last class of the day, Chemistry. He’d always enjoyed the sciences, he liked how most of it was hands on with labs to do, and experiments to try. Truthfully, he prefered biology because he wanted to learn how things worked, the various systems that kept a body alive, but Chemistry was something he was enjoying more and more.

His teacher had an interesting system in this class. At the start of each unit, she would select new lab partners for the students, in an effort to get them prepared for life beyond high school, when they’d have to learn to adapt to working with different kinds of people, and today was the start of a new unit.

She had one rule for matching up students with new partners. No besties, no couples.

Affixed to the blackboard with masking tape, were envelopes with each students name on it.Jake moved quickly to find his, and tugged it off, flipping the envelope over and ripping into it, pulling out the sheet of paper inside and unfolding it to read who he’d been matched up with for this unit.

He froze in place.

Couldn’t be. He must have misread. He folded the paper back up, closed his eyes, took a breath, then read it again.

The name written in black ink stared up at him, unchanged and he walked numbly towards one of the two person islands to take a seat, easing onto the stool carefully, letting his backpack rest on the island top as he flipped the paper open one last time and read the name written on it.

Brenna Nolan.

He ran a hand through his hair and massaged the muscles at the back of his neck for a minute, then quickly began searching his pockets for a piece of gum and popped one into his mouth.

He watched, silently chewing, as the other students filed into the classroom, elbows on the countertop in front of him, one hand folded over the other as his heart pounded.

“The Titan” was going to kill him. It wouldn’t be quick and painless either, it would be one of those long slow agonizing deaths.

Up until this point, Brenna had been paired with other girls in the class, so it had never been an issue.

The minutes seemed to slow to an unbearable crawl as first Derek, and then Brenna collected their envelopes, and he waited with bated breath to see what would happen.

When Brenna opened her envelope and read the paper inside she blinked, mouth forming into a tight “O” of surprise, but then smiled and looked for him, perching onto the stool at his side and setting her books down, and turning to greet him.

They made idle small talk for a minute, and he relaxed ever so slightly as she chatted to him quietly about the upcoming unit. Then a figure came to a halt next to him and loomed over him.

He stole a glance over, noting the letterman jacket and clenched his teeth, as his eyes slid up ever so slowly to meet the icy steel blue ones boring a hole into him.

Yup. Definitely going to die.

They stayed that way for a full minute, locked in a silent staring match as “The Titan” glared at him, fists clenched at his sides before he was mercifully saved by the teacher calling out over the din of the chatter to take their seats.

It was then he let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, as Derek reluctantly moved to his place next to his own lab partner, and he did his best to focus on what the teacher was saying, all the while feeling the icy stare that could have melted steel that was locked on him for the remainder of the period.

“The reaction rate or speed of reaction  for a reactant or product in a particular reaction is intuitively defined as how fast or slow a reaction takes place. For example, the oxidative rusting of iron under Earth’s atmosphere is a slow reaction that can take many years, but the combustion of cellulose in a fire is a reaction that takes place in fractions of a second.

Chemical kinetics is the part of physical chemistry that studies reaction rates. The concepts of chemical kinetics are applied in many disciplines, such as chemical engineering, enzymology and environmental engineering.”  (*1)

The teacher droned, and while he heard snippets of the words she was saying he was far too distracted by having Brenna so close to him and actually talkingto him to really hear or absorb most of it. She went on to tell them to open their textbooks to unit 17 and he did his best to follow along.

Then she touched him.

Her fingers were gentle on his arm as she laid them there to get his attention, and he looked at her wide eyed as she held out her cell phone.

“Will you type in your cell number so if I have any questions about the homework I can text you? Would you mind?” She asked softly, eyes looking at him expectantly.

“I…yeah…sure…if you want…” He stammered out, taking her phone from her, fishing his own out of his pocket. His fingers moved quickly to open it to the right screen and handed it over, then began stumbling over his words apologetically. “I mean..only if you wanna…you don’t have to…” He assured her, typing his own number into her phone and triple checking it to make sure he’d gotten the numbers right before handing it back.

She smiled at him happily, taking his phone and typing her name and number in, exchanging the phones when she was done, accepting hers when he did the same.

He was so gonna die.

~~~

When the bell rang to signal the end of class, and the end of the school day, she chirped a cheerful “See you later!” to him, and made her way to the front of the room, where Derek made a big show of wrapping his arm around her waist possessively,  kissing her on the mouth to stake his claim and make it crystal clear to the entire class who she belonged to.

Jake took his time sliding his books into his backpack, taking more time than strictly necessary honestly, waiting until Derek and Brenna were both out of sight before slinging the backpack over his shoulder, and making for the door.

He’d already made a stop at his locker between his last two classes, and he’d wasted enough time dawdling that he needed to hurry in order to make it to the bus before it pulled away, so he made his way towards the front doors of the school.

Beth and Paige would surely be on the bus already, and he couldn’t wait to get home and get through his chores so he could have some time alone to think about his stroke of luck at getting paired with Brenna when it hit him out of the blue.

His brain must have short circuited for a minute, likely due to shock, because it was only after he was tasting blood that he realised something was very very wrong.

Warm wetness was on his face and filling his mouth, before his face began to hurt when his eyes finally decided to focus and work and in front of  him loomed “The Titan.”

He was so dead.

(*1) – Taken from Wikipedia because I know nothing about chemistry.

Author’s note: Yay for a long chapter! And dun dun dun – cliffhanger! Thanks to anyone reading this, I hope you’re enjoying! Please feel free to comment if you’d like to!